who's who
How a decades-old hunch unlocked cancer treatment
Chantal Heijnen for STAT
Since the inception of cancer immunotherapy, most of the field has focused on T cells, the immune system's specialized killers. But after a patient's death during her medical residency in the '90s, Miriam Merad (above) became fascinated by macrophages, the immune cells often called the "gatekeepers" of the body's immune response. STAT's Angus Chen describes the cells like this: If each tissue in the body is like a garden, then macrophages are the gardeners.
In that metaphor, Merad is a gardening fanatic. Angus interviewed more than a dozen people who described her not only as a scientist with seminal contributions to macrophage and related cell biology, but as a force of nature who's convincing researchers these cells are critically important to breaking boundaries in health and disease. These days, she's one of a growing number of researchers who believe macrophages could make immunotherapies work for more people.
And it's not just cancer. Macrophages are a key topic for studying and potentially treating autoimmune, inflammatory, and aging related diseases like IBD or dementia. Read more from Angus about how Merad's bold bet is starting to rewrite the rules of immunotherapy.
one big number
1 in 150
That's the number of births in the U.S. that end in stillbirth (when a fetus dies at or after 20 weeks) each year, according to a study of commercial health insurance data published yesterday in JAMA. In low-income areas, the study found an even higher stillbirth rate of one in 112. For areas with a higher proportion of Black families than white families, the rate was one in 95. All of those numbers are higher than the CDC's reported rate of one in 175 each year.
heart health
Women gain more from exercise than men
When following or exceeding weekly exercise recommendations, women in a new study saw bigger drops than men in their risk of developing coronary heart disease. The new research, published yesterday, analyzed wearables data from more than 85,000 UK Biobank participants.
Women had a 22% lower risk of coronary heart disease if they logged 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous exercise. Men doing the same amount of exercise had a 17% lower risk. STAT's Elizabeth Cooney has more details on the research, including this important context: Previous research has shown that more women than men fall short of their recommended physical activity minutes. That rang true in this study, too, where women fell behind men in exercise duration, intensity, and adherence to guidelines. Read more about what the data means for future exercise recommendations.
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